Common Core for Early Learning: A Call to Summit

Power Struggle

In a recent webinar, David Kirp, author of The Sandbox Investment: The Preschool Movement, stated that the biggest challenge to early childhood is that different “factions” of early childhood stakeholders cannot put aside their differences and come together to agree on what is key to early childhood education today. This divide leaves the door open to consultants, “professional” researchers, and large for-profit corporations to step in and drive the discussions, secure research & development funds, and lobby legislation to meet their own agendas.

The simple fact is: it will be easier to collect reliable data and more cost effective if States adopt a common core set of early standards. Obviously since the Race to the Top funding, Quality Rating Improvement Systems are in the minds of all early childhood educators and states. If/when QRIS is funded in each state it will determine the commercial future of the EC market for all materials, curriculum and assessments. Common early learning standards must be instrument neutral---such as the way in which the Head Start Child Development and Early Learning Framework is impartial. But we must also coordinate our efforts so that this framework/standards considers the integrated approach of learning necessary in early childhood curriculum, young children's irregular development cycles, and the broader set of skills and knowledge a child needs to acquire children need in order to be successful.

Missteps & Injuries

To have any value for the money invested, implementing the Common Core State Standards should be seen as a formative process that will require collaboration, review and revision – not a power struggle between what makes good education reform VS. interested publishers, researchers trying to get funding or noticed, and commercial stakeholders. What if—as critics say—the K, 1, and 2 standards are too rigorous and expect children to perform at levels for which few are ready?

Sam Meisels’ makes a key point in a blog published by the Washington Post last week (http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/common-core-standards-pose-dilemmas-for-early-childhood/2011/11/28/gIQAPs1X6N_blog.html?wprss=answer-sheet). He says that the common core standards represent sky-high aspirations. Meisels feels that just because the standards have taller stair steps for each grade in order to reach a higher end goal doesn’t mean students will just naturally grow longer legs.

We must speak up so early childhood has a voice at this To date the Common Core State Standards are not yet validated for efficacy or studied for reliability. No studies or pilot programs were done prior to their acceptance by the RTT & US Dept of ED. Will the Common Core creators modify or agree to “push up” some standards when/if they find they are too rigorous to be accomplished by students in the current grade level our current education system.

We must come together as a field and argue for a national system—not just a state-by-state system—that uses instrument neutral methods of collecting, managing, and monitoring data about program quality and child progress. Conflicts of interest from academic research and personal agendas will be present in any discussions.

We must insist that no single assessment instrument or curricular approach is dictated for adoption. Right now big publishers battle to have their tool be the one tool specified in any state that will mandate a tool or curriculum. Researchers and academic institutions battle to have their projects funded. Those not on the “short lists” object and point out weaknesses in any instruments, research processes, and resulting decisions. This tactic will only further divide the early childhood field.

Any systems that are developed or adopted for Early Learning must be instrument neutral and allow for individual program choice about the specific tool to use to provide data on quality and progress. This is the model that Head Start implements: an expansive standards with objective frameworks that ensures local decision-making for implementation.